Galaxy Best

HAN SOLO

It’s official: the ballsy bootlegger is Star Wars’ coolest character. But he’s also a Corellian of surprising complexity

- Ian Freer

BY FAR THE funniest moment in (500) Days Of Summer, a likeable romcom which spins through key dates in the relationship between everyday guy Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and music-loving Manic Pixie Dream Girl Summer (Zooey Deschanel), is when Tom, bouncing down the street high on Summer, checks his appearance in a car window. Looking back at him as his reflection is Han Solo from A New Hope. Han winks at him — it’s the wink he gives Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) when he is receiving his medal for his role in blowing up the Death Star — and it makes Tom happy. Apart from the surprising thrill of seeing a familiar character in another movie (both were Fox properties), the joy of it is that everyone — man, woman, Princess, Wookiee — wants a Han Solo wink of approval. It’s the epitome of achievement unlocked.

This is one of the reasons Han Solo tops our list of Greatest Star Wars Characters: he is ineffably cool. He has wit, charm, street smarts, can understand Shyriiwook, woo ladies and jumpstart his spaceship just by smacking it. When, in Spaced, Simon Pegg’s Tim Bisley bagsies ‘Han’ as his codename for a daring dog rescue, he is doing what kids in playgrounds across the planet have done since 25 May 1977 — wanting to be Han Solo. Even if no-one knows the correct way to pronounce it.

“George Lucas is a ‘Han’ man,” says Alden Ehrenreich, who plays the younger Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story. “Leia has said Han and ‘Hahn’, but Harrison says Hahn. You wonder how that stuff went on in the original movies. I guess there was no-one monitoring it. They had other things to worry about.”